July 03, 2010

And Evidence of Its Beneficent Effects So Overwhelming...

Personally, the list offered me the opportunity to simultaneously sharpen my ideas, improve my expertise, locate knowledgeable sources and bullshit about baseball. The cost was occasional aggravation and a lot of lost time. (If I had a Proustian masterpiece inside me somewhere, J-List is to blame for its continued nonexistence.) As a collective we held people's feet to the fire, encouraged excellence, bemoaned administration wimpiness and took numerous opportunities to remind New Republic editors and authors that they work for a reactionary racist lunatic. This casual cross-pollination of information, ideas and anxieties can only have had a salutary effect on the quality of American liberalism, high-minded journalism and public policy–oriented scholarship.

You can see the magnificent riches of the effects of Journolist so helpfully identified by Alterman across a stunning array of articles, addressing a staggering variety of subjects.

Some commentary concerning Alterman's appallingly awful views will be found in, "It's Called the Ruling Class Because It Rules," more particularly about Alterman's casually racist condescension and his third-grader's belief in the nobility of the law, which leads him to view as an especially great evil anything which produces "contempt for the law." Buddy: if you don't experience "contempt for the law" at least 50 times a day in contemporary America, you're in an irreversible coma.

And about what they themselves should view as the despicable and contemptible behavior of progressives and liberals in the Age of Obama, see:

"...a salutary effect on the quality of American liberalism, high-minded journalism and public policy–oriented scholarship..." Propriety forbids me from offering a more detailed, fully justified reaction to this kind of self-congratulatory shit. Shucks, that slipped out.

As with Marc Ambinder and others who are now repeatedly telling themselves and anyone else who will listen how awe-inspiringly glorious, noble and uniquely knowledgeable and perceptive they are, we can only fall on bended knee to acknowledge that the elite truly are specially special and that we who are so abjectly miserable can never hope to approach, however remotely, the splendiferousness of their being. Oh, Marc! Oh, Eric! I swoon.

Now you must pardon me. I need to take a long, slow, very messy crap. Oopsy! Slipped out again. So to speak.

Okay. Buh-bye!

P.S. I wouldn't worry about that "Proustian masterpiece," Alterman. Christ, the self-regard of these people. Journolist might be a handy excuse; perhaps you could try a rather more obvious explanation. Start with ... all right, I won't be rude again. You needn't feel so constrained! And in my case, the bathroom beckons...